Which option, managed hosting or self-hosting, typically offers better performance in terms of speed and response times?

Hey @James both use the same core, so both have the same performance really. But, if you want to save time from fine tuning the core yourself for performance, use our managed service.

Do we require a custom domain to access Core? For instance, if Core is hosted on an EC2 instance on port 80, can we access it with an IP address, or is there a requirement to access it with a domain over HTTPS?

you can just use the ip as well